Tulsi Prajna 1997 10

SR No.: 524593
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Parmeshwar Solanki
Publisher: Jain Vishva Bharati
Publication Year: 1997
Total Pages: 188
Language: Hindi
Classification: Magazine, India_Tulsi Prajna, & India
File Size: 8 MB

Page 181

Vol. xxIII, No. 3
147
morphic approach to nature is fraught with dangerous consequences. Nature evolves as a whole and all evolution whether of environ. ment, flora or fauna, essentially is a co-evolution. Man therefore, cannot afford to develop alone or at the cost of his correlates. Any unbalanced or lopsided development, unfriendly to man's ecological ambience, is a lethal blow to his own survival. Let us not forget that being has a precedence over well-being and living over star of living. At this historic juncture, nomcsis threatens to overtake mankind if it persists in its blissful ignorance to embellishing its superstructures of civilization at the cost of its basic structures of survival. In the law of nature, every quantitative growth has a limit set for itself, then qualitative growth follows endlessly. Endless economic growth, therefore, is against the philosophy of nature and hence a vain pursuit. Material wealth, howsoever expandable, is diminishable through sharing, in contradistinction to spiritual wealth where sharing has a multiplier effect. This may explain why the ancient civilization of India nourished by the wisdom of its savants laid greater empbasis on acquiring of spiritual wealth rather than material goods. The production of material goods, howsoever sophisticated its technology, would always lag behind the prolifera. tion of illegitimate needs generated by a consumerist culturo. Whereas means and processes employed in amassing material wealth entail tepsion and conflict, setting each man against the other, making earth an accursed place, spiritual quest confers upon the earth an aura of love, service and compassion, a co-living and co-sharing.
The philosophy of development, therefore, must be an integral part of the philosophy of life itself. The sine qua non of man is his value orientation and not his need motivation. Man is soul which has a body and not a body which has a soul. Man's dignity lice in what he is and not in what he has. Man's being, therofore, is of fundamental concern to man and not his baving. An authentic development must focus on the enrichment of man's being and not an unceasing expansion of his having. Standard of living must be a corollary of the standard of life, and not vice versa, similarly. humanics of life must get a higher pedestal than the mechanics of life. Man must strain to develop not in tension with naturo, but in tandem with it. Development can never be a boon to man if it is a bane to nature.
The present ecological crisis is the end product of the anthropocentric view of the world represented by the Semitic religións. There is an existential alienation between man and nature. According to Christian theology, man is not a part of nature, he is outside